Float Like A Butterfly
by Charynrae
Summary: Seamus Finnegan has come down with a case of the butterflies, and it's up to Harry Potter to figure out why.
1. Chapter 1

Since his impromptu introduction into the world of witchcraft and wizardry, Harry Potter has witnessed many bizarre things. Unicorns, flesh-eating manuscripts, and fire-breathing slugs just to name a few. But, as he slouches down in his seat in History and does a fine job of drowning out Professor Binn's intangible droning, he's pretty certain he witnesses the most bizarre occurence yet.

Seamus Finnegan, two seats down from Harry, seems to be... Erm. Sweating butterflies.

OOO

"I dunno," Seamus begins after Harry catches up to him after class, shrugging off the hand that lands on his shoulder. "It just started a few weeks ago. 'S pretty random, too. Doesn't happen in the dorms or nothin' like that."

"Does it happen in certain classes?" Harry frowns and wonders if there was a chance he could start producing butterflies. He would like to avoid that, if at all possible. He's sure he's odd enough without insects following him around.

Seamus looks thoughful as he answers. "Yeah, actually. Potions and History, and sometimes in the Greenhouse."

Potions. Hmm. Snape and several unstable fluids could be a lead, and the Greenhouse holds a few bug repellent potions that could have possibly went bad, but why would it happen in History?

Harry stops in his tracks and inhales audibly. "Seamus! We have the Slytherins in those classes! Do you think they slipped you something?" They were, after all, sleazy underhanded snakes who.. well, admittedly, have just pulled a stupid prank, if any of them were at fault. Seamus seems to echo his own thoughts and grimaces over at Harry.

"Why _butterflies_?" He grabs Harry's arm and turns them back towards the hallway they've just missed. "If it were the Slytherins trying to pull somethin', don'tcha think they would go with a more dangerous animal? Dingos maybe? Or a rhinoceros?" They squeeze by a group of Hufflepuff girls and slip into the library. "They could've at least went with somethin' a bit more manly."

He flings his bookbag into an open chair and slouches down into the one beside it. Harry sits just as sloppily in the chair opposite. "Maybe that was their plan. You know how bad they are at Charms. Be lucky you're not contending with acid slugs or pythons."

"Yeah, thanks loads. But seriously, what do ya think it is?"

"You'd be better off asking Hermione, mate." He wrinkles his nose at Seamus' unimpressed look. "Well it's certainly not like we're in a room with thousands of stored bits of paper, on which an answer might be found." He sniffs and pulls his Charms book out of his bookbag. "Just go look in the section labeled.."

"Is there a butterfly section?"

Harry frowns and digs through his bag for a quill. "How the hell am I supposed to know that?"

Seamus throws him another look, you know that one that says _you're about as helpful as a stump_.

"Actually," Harry thinks out loud, tapping his chin with his quill, quite possibly getting ink everywhere,"Neville might know a bit about it. Y'know, he's always reading those books about horticulture, and insects go along with that stuff, right?"

Seamus blinks. "Well let's go find 'im, then."

OOO

Neville, as it turns out, knows about as much about butterflies as Harry and Seamus do, but he does offer Seamus some Gurdyroot, which is said to ward away insects if kept in the left front pocket of a young man's trousers. "But what if they show up when I'm naked?" was Seamus' first inquiry, followed by, "It smells like rotten cabbage!"

"It's supposed to," Neville supplies helpfully, patting the lumpy pocket.

"I don' wanna smell like cabbage! That's worse than havin' butterflies follow me around."

Neville blinks wide eyes and clutches his Herbology book closer. "Wait. You haven't gotten into any Flutterby Bush recently, have you?"

"No." Seamus frowns and pries the wad of root out of his pocket. "What's Flutterby Bush?"

"We studied it fourth year!"

Harry shifts from foot to foot and doesn't lose any of his positive momentum over the fact that he bloody well doensn't know what Flutterby Bush is, either, and takes the opportunity to point out that they were all a bit distracted fourth year by dragons and Bulgarians and a fake Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

Neville happily ignores him and flips to a page in his book. He holds it out to Seamus and points. "It looks like this."

"Tha's a bush," Seamus deadpans.

"Well. Yes. That's what Flutterby Bush is." He taps his wand to the picture and the leaves of the bush begin fluttering. "It flutters, like butterflies. That's why butterflies are attracted to it. You don't have any on you, do you?" Harry silently marvels at the fact that it doesn't even sound like Neville considers it to be an odd circumstance. Yes, everyone just carries spare bits of bush on them at all times.

"Er, no..."

OOO

"I guess you could go to Madame Pomfrey," Harry offers as they sit at the edge of the Black Lake and hurl rocks into the water. Harry had never quite gotten down the fine art of skipping rocks, and Seamus had as heavy a hand as any, so they figured this was the next best thing.

"I don' think the squid likes it," Seamus comments when a particularly big rock is hurled back at them. Harry plucks a bit of seaweed from his hair and shrugs.

"About going to Pomfrey...?"

"I'll leave that as a last-ditch effort." Seamus frowns and picks up a clump of dirt. "I don' like the infirmary, ya know."

Harry shudders as he thinks back to broken bones and cracked skulls and waking up to losing Quidditch matches. "No, me neither."

Seamus scans the grounds behind him and Harry watches as his eyes brighten and settle on the Quidditch Pitch. "Wanna go spy on the Slytherin team?"

Like any good team Capitain, of course he does. They crawl up the incline from the lake to the pitch and duck down low, mostly unneccessairily as the only ones out on the field are Malfoy and Montague, and they are much too engrossed in trying to attempt a reverse pass to notice the two boys.

It's several minutes into their sleuthing that Harry feels a small breath on the back of his neck and he slaps his hand out to catch a crushed butterfly in his palm. "Oops."

Seamus narrows his eyes and glances at the unfortunate insect. "Ya killed one o' my butterflies," he said quietly.

Harry's eyes widen and he frowns down at his hand. "I didn't mean to!" he says in a rushed whisper. "Does. Does it hurt?"

"Well. No. Feels odd," he mumbles stoically and turns back to the pitch. "Eh, they're packin' it up now. We might as well leave." He scoops up his bag from the grass and ambles his way back to the castle door.

Harry follows after his friend, feeling a strange mixture of bemused and guilty.

OOO

As it happens, Harry stumbles on the answer he and Seamus have been looking for completely by accident. And possibly fate, as he wouldn't have been looking in this particular book on this particular page if it hadn't been for Ginny insisting that magical caterpillars left behind a sticky sap that could be turned into leather. Of all the ludicrous things, really, Harry just refused to believe that caterpillars could produce leather.

Turns out, as he pages through the small section on caterpillars, he is wrong. But that's not the important part, because in the footnotes of the caterpillar section is the information he's been looking for; _Magical Butterflies, stemming from Magical Caterpillars and later Magical Cocoons (as it were, are an excellent addition to goat cheese salad), are the product of strong physical attraction. The term "Butterflies in my stomach" derives from this term to describe an attraction towards a currently unattainable mate. _

So, basically. Seamus has a crush. Harry grins to himself and slams the book shut.

"You're all full of it," he announces to the awaiting Ginny and Dean, then shoves the book in his bag and scurries up the stairs to his dorm. It's hard to hide his glee as he finds the very boy he's looking for alone in the room, reading a comic book Dean had brought from home.

"You have a crush!"

Seamus frowns and does a very good slack-jawed expression. "S'cuse me?"

"That's why you're making butterflies. You keep seeing someone you have a crush on, and it's making you have butterflies in your stomach, and they're getting out. It makes perfect sense!" Harry flings his arms out triumphantly and plops down on the edge of Seamus' bed. He basks in the joy of solving a mystery and gains a whole new appreciation for Hermione and her constant searching for answers. This is a satisfying feeling.

"Er, except where it doesn't make any sense," Seamus butts in, effectively ruining Harry's musing. "I haven' got a crush."

"Maybe you just don't know about it yet," Harry offers, grabbing at the comic and flipping it to the front. Classic Batman.

"Harry," Seamus takes a breath, "tha' is stupid."

"_You_," Harry motions to Seamus with the comic, "are the stupid one. Having secret crushes you don't even know about!" And he's pretty sure he doesn't deserve it when Seamus pushes him off the edge of the bed and steals the comic back, but he allows it.

"I do not have a crush," he says firmly, whipping the pages open and straight and hiding his face.

OOO

After some very serious thinking and a game of chess where he loses spectacularly, Harry decides that if he wants to know who Seamus has a crush on, he must chart Seamus' butterflies. When they appear, if they appear in excess around a certain person, if they change color- actually, no, that last one might not help very much. He frowns and scribbles out the word _Color_ on his chart.

"Harry?"

He looks over just in time to get a face full of auburn curls in his face. "'Lo, Hermione," he mumbles.

"Hello." She frowns and turns large brown eyes to his paper. "Is that homework? I don't remember that being assigned! Oh, I just knew I missed something when Ronald insisted I watch him make an origami fish!"

"What? No." Honestly, when has he ever started on his homework voluntarily? It's hard for him to squash his amusement at Hermione's fretting, and that can only mean that he's not being a very good friend. "It's very important. I'm stalking Seamus."

"I thought you were stalking Malfoy?" She pulls her hair over her shoulder and sits down beside him.

"It's sleuthing when it comes to Malfoy," he corrects. After all, Malfoy was committing heineous acts. Seamus wasn't doing anything slightly evil. Butterflies were the opposite of evil. He pulls his charts to his chest and sighs. "Seamus has butterflies."

"I don't understand." And well. That's new. Hermione usually doesn't require more information than Harry initially gives. She can usually latch onto an idea well before Harry has formulated it.

"Like, you know," he gestures with his charts. "What you get when you have a crush." And he tries his hardest to sound like he's always had this bit of information tucked away that she doesn't know about, because dammit, it's nice to be the one in the know every once in a while.

"Since when do people get- Oh! You mean metaphorically, of course."

"No. I mean, Seamus makes butterflies appear when he gets around his crush. Literally. I accidentally crushed one." There's still a pang of guilt left over from that one, actually. He pushes himself off the couch and towards the portrait hole. There's stalking to be done.


	2. Chapter 2

It occurs to Harry later that he's forgotten the Marauder's Map in his room. For one thing, he's already endured that, _oh gosh I've dropped it and it's not in my pocket and I'll never find it again_ panic, backtracked, and found nothing. For another, Hermione drops down beside him thirty minutes later as he's sat himself on an overlook beside a rather opinionated gargoyle and hands him the lost item.

"You are really handy, you know." He shoots her a grin that doesn't seem to wipe the exasperated look off her face and unfolds the paper. "You love me and you know it," he mutters over her sigh.

"Yes, constantly picking up after you and Ronald is the highlight of my day, you know."

"I know how you especially enjoy inspecting our homework for us and making sure we dress properly," he only says because it's true. Hermione has about as much mothering in her as Mrs. Weasley, she just hides it a great deal better with shrill words and well-timed sighs. He spares a glance back down at the map stretched out over his legs and spots Seamus' dot heading towards the courtyard.

Hermione spreads her skirt out over her knees and leans in and does a very good impression of not trying to sneak a peek at the map. Harry doesn't know why she's bothering to act uninterested, it's _Hermione_.

"So." Harry frowns and momentarily wonders about his natural tendency to let Hermione work out his troubles. For one thing, he's been working on this problem for what feels like ten thousand hours and he knows he wants the satisfaction of doing the job himself. For another, he doesn't know whether Seamus would want Hermione to know who he's having butterflies over. What if it's someone horrible? Hermione isn't exactly a gossip, but she has this judgemental stare...

"I'm not sure who Seamus has a crush on," he confirms. Because it's the truth, and because it's easy to give her the information she so clearly wants when there's nothing informative about it.

"Work on it like a word problem," she offers sagely.

"Like in math?"

"Like in life, Harry. Take what you know and make it apply to the circumstances until you've worked out a word problem."

Right. Okay. Harry knows he can do this, he used to do this in grade school before he came to Hogwarts.

If someone gives you one Seamus... and a hundred butterflies...

He bites down on his lip and sighs. This is going to be harder than he thought.

OOO

Every now and then, Harry slows down and takes a real long look at something, and promptly feels like an idiot for previously missing such key facts. Like, okay, Hermione wasn't meaning a mathematical word problem, and when he starts to look at the issue in a different light, he realises what he's been missing. Seamus has butterflies in the classes there are Slytherins in. Right. So, his crush is a Slytherin. But, he has butterflies sometimes when he's watching the Slytherin Quidditch team as well. So it's someone on the team.

So it's a boy on the Quidditch team in their year, and..

"Oh, fuck's sake," he mutters.

"Oy, _language_, Harry," Ginny mutters from her perch on the edge of the couch, not bothering to look from the sketchbook balanced on her knee.

"I'll have you know my language is entirely appropriate for this situation," Harry snips back, pushing himself from the couch. He strides towards the portrait and snags Seamus by the collar on the way.

"Harry, wha'?-"

The portrait swings open and he pulls the boy outside behind him, turning around to face him with both hands on his hips. It's more intimidating that way, he thinks.

"Since when do you fancy Malfoy?"

And okay, Harry doesn't really intend to blurt it out like that, but thankfully there's no one hanging around outside the portrait hole to overhear this stunning bit of news and float it all over the castle. The last thing Harry wanted to do was out Seamus before he was ready and have the whole school talking about him.

"Er. Wha'? I don' fancy Malfoy, he's a prick."

"But he's the one you're making butterflies over," Harry says slowly.

And then Seamus gives him that _look_, the unhelpful log-like look, and runs a hand through his hair.

"_Harry_."

"What?" Harry frowns and crosses his arms because his hips can only stay sassy for so much time before he pulls something. "It is him, Seamus, I did the research."

"Stalkin'!"

"Research!" Harry starts to fish in his bag for his fucking chart, because that thing has all his proof, but Seamus' palm curls around his wrist before he gets the chance and he's being stared at by large brown eyes.

"Harry. I don' fancy Malfoy, I don' fancy boys. Me mum would kill me." Seamus' voice breaks.

And oh.

Oh.

He opens his mouth, but at this point he doesn't know what to say and he can feel his face starting to heat up. He'd spent so much time pratting around and getting into Seamus' business and feeling so smug when he came to his conclusion that he sort of didn't realise how delicate of a situation it was. Of course Seamus can't like Malfoy.

He watches Seamus swallow and shrug, and doesn't say anything.

But.

But he's going to fix this.


End file.
